The Height of Society

In college, I once wrote a paper that was based on a scene in Zola's Le ventre de Paris, where he compared a fish market to society. My paper did the same thing, only I used the grocery store. I talked about how, in the candy aisle, the bad candy (those bulk chocolate balls or GROSS strawberry things) are always wrapped/dressed in the fanciest papers to hide their nastiness. I also talked about the cereal aisle: the bags of cereal, the cheapest cereal, is always on the bottom shelf while the most expensive cereal (Blueberry Morning, mmm...) is on the top shelf.

Today I went grocery shopping and this analysis was totally thrown off.

I wanted to try the new Cheerios with the yogurt, both because it sounds good and sweet but also scary. Cheerios is, and always has been, a middle shelf item; it's more expensive than store brand and bags but cheaper than those tiny boxes of Cranberry Almond Crunch (mmm...). I'll get maybe two bowls out of this yogurt stuff (admittedly, I pour big bowls so I'm not exaggerating too much) and this costs almost twice what a big (not biggest) box of plain ol' Cheerios costs.

When did Cheerios decide they had to be all hoity-toity? Dude, I could buy even GOOD yogurt (Yoplait, mmm...), pour it on my cereal and still pay less and get a bigger box. (Although, I imagine it would make my cereal much soggier.) This cereal better be a well-dressed man with money and class (I'd take him home all the time).